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Using Writing Coach with The Reader’s Journey

Introduction This guide explains how you can use Writing Coach to support instruction from The Reader’s Journey. It examines the Writing Coach activities that can enhance the Language Coach and Writing Workshop lessons from The Reader’s Journey.

This guide uses Grade 7 materials as examples, but you can generalize the information to any grade level.

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The Reader’s Journey Language Coach Lessons

Each unit of instruction in The Reader’s Journey includes Language Coach lessons. These lessons address grammar and spelling skills in preparation for the upcoming Writer’s Workshop. You can look to Writing Coach’s in-depth grammar instruction to enhance these lessons.

This Language Coach lesson from Unit 1 begins with an activity focused on subject-verb agreement. After a brief introduction to the topic, students practice making corrections to a sample student essay.

They then generate sentences of their own in which the subject and verb agree. Students might also look back to an earlier reading selection to practice identifying nouns, pronouns, and subjects.

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Writing Coach Core Grammar Chapters

If students need additional practice, you can supplement this lesson with Writing Coach grammar activities.

Begin by looking to the Core Grammar chapters. Chapter 23, Making Words Agree, includes instruction on subject-verb agreement. Here, students can study the topic in greater depth and complete additional practice activities, which include speaking and writing applications.

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You can also look to Writing Coach’s Find It/Fix It Grammar Game Plan for supplemental instruction. This section provides instructional mini-lessons that focus on the twenty most common grammatical errors that student make. For instance, you might assign the mini-lesson on Spelling Errors after students complete The Reader’s Journey Language Coach activity Spelling High-Frequency Words.

You can also use the grammar mini-lessons that are built into Writing Coach’s Core Writing Chapters to support The Reader’s Journey instruction.

Look back to The Reader’s Journey Unit 1 Language Coach lesson for an example. After learning about subject-verb agreement, students take a closer look at pronouns, including instruction on pronoun-antecedent agreement.

Writing Coach Find It/Fix It Grammar Game Plan

Writing Coach Grammar Mini-Lessons

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The Reader’s Journey Writer’s Workshop

You can build on this lesson with the Antecedents mini-lesson embedded in Writing Coach’s Fiction Narration writing assignment. Here, students review examples from a student model and complete an additional practice activity. When applicable, they can then apply what they have learned as they review their own written work.

Writing Coach also provides opportunities to build on the Writer’s Workshop lessons found in The Reader’s Journey.

In this example, students write a descriptive essay. The lesson includes guidance for each step in the writing process, as well as a student model to help students get started.

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You can then look to Writing Coach to build on the skills students practiced as they completed The Reader’s Journey Descriptive Essay Writer’s Workshop.

Notice that Writing Coach includes a Core Writing Chapter titled Poetry and Description. Within this chapter, you can find a section that provides information about the various forms of poetry and descriptive writing. Use this section, along with the corresponding activity, to deepen students’ understanding of the purposes of descriptive writing.

This chapter also includes a Writing for Media assignment devoted to travel writing. This assignment gives students an opportunity to complete another descriptive writing assignment with structured support for each step in the writing process.

Take a look at one more example from Grade 7. After students complete The Reader’s Journey Writer’s Workshop on how to write a How-To Essay, look to the Writing Coach Workplace Writing chapter. Here you can find a Writing for Media lesson on how to write a set of instructions. Students can practice applying what they learned during The Reader’s Journey Writer’s Workshop as they create a multimedia slide show featuring a set of instructions.

Writing Coach Core Writing Chapters

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For a complete list of correlations between Writing Coach and The Reader’s Journey, look to the grade-specific alignment guides found on the Reader’s Journey Web site.

This guide explored how you can use Writing Coach to support instruction from The Reader’s Journey. It explained how Writing Coach’s in-depth grammar instruction can enhance The Reader’s Journey Language Coach lessons. This guide also introduced how you can use Writing Coach assignments and activities to reinforce The Reader’s Journey’s Writing Workshops.

Alignment Guide

Review